There are two wishes the sightseer makes when sailing towards Milford Sound, a dramatic fiord formed by the ancient, incremental rock-shaping push of glaciers from mountain to sea. The first is rain, because it makes the waterfalls run, turning casual trickles into violent cascades. The second is for that same rain to clear so you can see the natural wonders properly, rather than imagining them through romantic but frustrating mists.
I make both those wishes as one of 200 passengers aboard the Scenic Eclipse II on the first day of its spring jaunt around Aotearoa New Zealand. We start at Bluff, the sleepy southern seaport known for its bike trails and plump oysters (shucking season is March to August), before powering north past the South Island’s rugged fiordland. Ahead of us is Milford Sound, the most famous fiord of them all.
The wish for rain is soon granted, evidenced by the towel-off required after a quick weather recce from my private verandah. The next day, the second wish comes true: as I swoop around Milford Sound by helicopter, I’m grateful for the rain that made the falls tumble, and equally grateful for it clearing so we could fly.
That night, we head to Night Market where a Filipino menu is running for three nights. The seas are rough during dinner, a mass of roiling four-metre swells. As we finish the first course, our swivel stools spin hither and thither, the horizon tips and tails, and the sky is grey and looming above inky, messy waves. Inside, the drama is muted: Scenic Eclipse II’s stabilisers protrude underwater like fins, slowing the pitch of the ship as it tracks doughtily, almost dreamily onward. “That kind of sea is what you could expect on a trip to Antarctica,” Norwegian captain Torry Sakkariassen tells me the next day, no doubt anticipating summer’s southern ice expeditions, dapper in his white uniform on the boat’s seventh level control centre, which is open to all. Navigation is all computerised: Sakkariassen and his crew drive by keyboard, mouse and joystick rather than wheel. When the journey pauses, there is no seabed-scraping anchor.

Rather, a yacht version of treading water holds Eclipse II steady. Back at Night Market, we’re among just eight passengers, seated around a counter where Filipino classics are reframed as poised courses. Chicharon (fried pork rind) is turned into a hearty canapé, with roasted pork belly piled over a crackling crisp. Beef adobo is smoked under a glass dome. Frozen mango puree is scraped into iced scrolls stuffed with sticky rice. It’s intimate, adventurous, delicious. “This is my favourite restaurant in the world right now,” says chef Tom Goetter, whose formal title is vice president, Scenic Group Oceans Hotel Operations, but whose job is more culinary provocateur, throwing ideas at a food team of 35 nationalities, many of whom he’s been working with for six years or more. “I would be stupid not to engage with them,” says the German chef, who trained under Thomas Keller. “If you’re humble enough to learn from your crew, then you can create incredible experiences.”
His chef de cuisine is Strawberry Besin, who enters Night Market to present the fifth course, a crêpe dyed green with dill oil, stuffed with prawn mousse and roasted eggplant, striped with spicy lobster mayonnaise and scattered with tempura bites flavoured with shellfish powder. “I call it Dragon Roll because of the green and red colours, because it sets your mouth on fire and also because I was born in the Year of the Dragon,” she says. Crafting a menu based on her Filipina heritage was exciting and nerve-wracking. “I had goosebumps, I was blushing,” she says. The Dragon Roll took two months of development, culminating in a presentation to Scenic founder Glen Moroney, a Newcastle-raised accountant who launched with “scenic” bus tours along the Great Ocean Road in the 1980s and commenced river cruises on the Rhine and Danube in 2007. His company now has a shipyard in Croatia, building its own boats for European rivers and the Mekong, plus two powerful ocean “discovery yachts”, including the newest which we are aboard for the start of an 18-day jaunt that eventually docks in Auckland.
If we weren’t eating at Night Market, maybe we’d be at the sushi counter, or the Italian steak restaurant, or eating light, elegant French food, or sprucing up for the 10-seat Chef’s Table, where the dégustation includes a deconstructed Caprese salad, foie gras lollipop, and wagyu draped over hot stones, all with matched wines. Room service is a possibility anytime, perhaps a burger and Champagne, delivered by a suave butler shared between six cabins. Our butler Mohammed is from Morocco; like most of the crew, who don’t quite outnumber the passengers, he’s aboard for four months then off for two. During his upcoming break he’ll meet his son, born last week.

Cruises have never been my first choice. And when I say never, I mean it. I’ve never been on one. But now that I’m on the water, I’m realising two things. One, travelling by sea is venerable and storied, a mythology that I can actually tap into as someone entranced by ports and seaside cities, but hitherto only from the land side. As a fresh sailor, looking back to land, or at least towards it, it clicks that I am part of an old lineage, 70 per cent water and 100 per cent happy. But the second realisation is a problem. I’ve debuted as a seafarer on this beautiful yacht, with its aerial Pilates, bottomless premium wine, instant hot water and, perhaps most surprisingly, very good coffee.
After flying first class, the only way is down. On the last day, I’m properly ruined by an onshore experience at Ulva Island, which we zip to in an inflatable motorboat. Ulva is a petite sanctuary, 3.5 kilometres long, otherwise accessible by water taxi from Stewart Island, itself a remote outpost. Ulva’s tiny scope belies its magnificence: it’s thick with forest and birds. Gnarled rata and tall rimu trees oversee a tangled understory of ferns, vines and shrubs. Fantails flit, creepers dart, we know there are kiwis in there somewhere. “The vegetation is the same as it would have been thousands of years ago,” says our guide Cherie, a chirpy nature whisperer, plucking shoots for us to nibble, giving me a blossom and telling me to dart my beak into it as though I am also a feathered creature, hungry for sweetness. I poke my tongue into a red flower, feeling silly and glad. Behind me, across still waters, my eight-storey home awaits majestic and sleek and I know in my cabin, the pillows have been plumped, the cotton sheets smoothed and tucked, my butler just a phone call away.
Scenic offers 12- and 13-day itineraries across New Zealand, taking in Milford Sound, on Scenic Eclipse II. Prices start from $38,910 (dynamic).
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